Possibly, I’ve spent too much time on Instagram, scrolling like I am demented, looking for something to entertain me. I’ve caught myself, over the course of this summer, (which has been an awesome summer, with some certifiably Instagram-worthy moments to it), becoming immersed in the social media lure. I tell my teenagers to get offline, then I try to do the same, because, y’know, practice what you preach, and I fail. I read articles entitled ‘break up with your phone’ and I wonder: how? My phone is the method through which my day, my kids, my husband, my friends and my work functions. Within my family, it’s how we communicate, plan, evolve, argue, apologise, share. So instrumental in the day to day, the hour to hour, that I wonder: can a mother of teenagers ever really break up with her phone? My mind telescopes back to my own teenagehood, aged 16, evenings spent on the landline, not even cordless, but tethered by the phone cable to the wall, in the room downstairs, by the kitchen. Now, I challenge myself to stop scrolling, but this summer was spent, when not away on holiday, in a kind of maternal half-life of waiting to take on whatever plans had been made, and who needed a lift where. My phone becomes someone to chat to whilst I wait.

Note to self: never, ever chose a rurally located house when you have small children. No matter how charming you think it will be to hang a piñata on the tree in the garden, and have frolicking children gambol beneath. You can’t possibly imagine a time when they are grown up teenagers, and said rural house is not on a bus route, is miles from town, and every step from the front door (virtually) is along a treacherous, blind-cornered, country road.

I drove a lot of miles in July and August.

So, my status quo has been in place for a few years. I am a housewife, who is also a writer. I can cook and clean to a standard beyond Apprentice Level. I am an Advanced Level housewife, and in recent months that has taken centre-stage, and the writer in me has had to wait, hold back, knowing it’s not her time. I get panicked thinking: whenwill it ever be my time?! I bet Beyonce doesn’t have this problem.

I read my contemporaries as they discuss their own ambition, and I nod in agreement. But where does social media fit in the landscape of ambition? What is Facebook and Instagram to the middle aged woman? Why do some have a natural compulsion to post pictures, like the teens, whereas others will have no part to if? Do we compete to be seen? Is it a way for us to remain ‘current’, to say, ‘I’m still here! Look at me!’ I observe women much younger than I, who are newly married, childless, or building their own empires, and they discuss how they manage their time, and share hints and tips for how to ask for a salary increase, or how to manage a freelance work schedule, or how they arrange their shelves. I find myself thinking, yes, but are there fewer requirements of you at that time in life, other than to be 25, and fabulous, and to have Instagrammable shelves? They perhaps don’t have the self-consciousness my generation has.

I’ve heard it said that a woman’s ambition can make her ugly, especially when it is played out, vicariously, through the lives of her children. This is why competitive school mothers are such a recognisable cohort. This week, an extravaganza of ‘back to school’ pictures flood my feed. I wonder if in years to come, our children will feel duped that their photos were posted without their consent? It’s the equivalent of your mum getting a family album out when your boyfriend visits, but it’s there for the entire world to see, forever. Even with privacy settings.

Whilst scrolling, I happen across the work of a photographer, and she’s selling her photos as prints. I want one instantly, it’s called ‘Breath’. This is the side effect, the other power of Instagram. We direct message (DM, to the uninitiated); it’s done, I’ve bought one, and she’s putting it in the post. I tell her I want the image as it shows, in a glance, what a relationship should look like; see above (and note the air bubbles). What love can look like, if you’re young and free. I want to hang it in my house.

Meanwhile, the pictures persist on Instagram; things to covet, things to consider, concepts to absorb, stories to post.

It’s possible I have become a cliché, or a foregone conclusion. A version of myself I might have lamented, dare I say, ridiculed, in the past? This, especially when I was building my corporate career, and had little time for the contemplation that is now my daily activity. Have I lost my way? In the past, at times where I lost my way, I was unable to see how and where, and it was only with the passing of time that I could recognise what had happened. Now – and by that I mean nowadays, as my status quo has been static for some time, – there is awareness. A personal surety that I can attribute to life experience. This is what it feels like to be the other side of 40, and liking it.

I notice a change in my habits. I used to read; now I listen. Various factors have influenced this, but in the main, it is to do with movement. I don’t have the ability to sit still, and even less do I have the inclination to do only one task at a time. There’s a karmic, yogic, meditative voice inside me repelled at this admission, as surely the whole point of self-care and of my ‘not working’ is to spend time being still. I ventured too far down the road of doing too much when I worked in a corporate job, and I misplaced my equilibrium, both mental and physical. I am restored now, although it took years.

When I first stopped working, the silence in the house was a deafening friend, so I started listening to the radio. Mainly Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 which kept me from being lonely and reminded me of what it was like to spend time around clever women. That was the one thing I missed the most about working; the cleverness of my peers. Seems intellect is something I value more highly than I knew, and even though the dog was a fine companion – the best – I found the quietness unnerving. I started listening to books on Audible. At the start of my Masters degree, I recall my tutor telling me I should be reading a couple of books a week. At least. What started as a luxurious permission to sit still and read for the good of my ongoing education, became something else entirely when I realised the time it sucked. Audio books enabled me to multi-task; run and listen, iron and listen, drive and listen, walk and listen. The experience of listening to literature is an entirely different one to absorbing words that are read. There’s a theatricality to it, accents and intonations, and I sometimes miss a really good line and have to scroll back to capture it, whereas before I would have folded the page, made a note in the margin.

I then moved on to podcasts, a handful of them but none with much longevity. Then a few weeks back, I saw a recommendation on Instagram for a podcast called Dear1995 so I started listening. It is genius! Throw-back, big time, it made me go to the attic, and get out my diaries from that time to see what the hell I thought of life when I was all of 20 years old. I recommended it to everyone. I recommended it to my friend Robin, who is an interior designer and who incidentally is my American style counsel and facilitator to the times when I buy clothes from American companies and I don’t want to pay postage. She’s like a feeder to my fashion habit; shameful but necessary. And a pretty awesome person all around. Robin is a 90’s child, so I knew she’d love it. She and I were both running events (opposite sides of the Atlantic) in the past week where we have had to stand up in front of a group and talk about what we do. Terrifying. The only salve to that is online shopping.

Then I saw on the newly revamped Selfish Mother instagram feed – for whom I occasionally write articles – that there was a podcast called ‘Bookish By Sonia Walger‘ where Dawn O’Porter was being interviewed about writing, and her top five book choices. Listened. Loved. Was hooked. For what its worth, my favourite book of all time is still John Updike’s ‘Couples’ which is a work of such genius, it makes my heart ache. I digress; then I downloaded Dawn O’Porter’s podcast called ‘Get It On‘ where she (with irreverence, intelligence and sassiness) discusses style, and why people wear the clothes they do. This concept has always, always fascinated me. And best of all, I now have a supply of about thirty episodes to get through which makes every other mundane journey in the car just that little bit better.

This is how micro-influencing works and I love it. I really do. I follow an eclectic, hand-picked network of people and brands and they lead me to such riches and now I have, through the wonder of technology, clever peers with me in my working day again. It is just the best thing. Positive, happy, bold women who talk about stuff that interests them and interest me. So I start most conversations now with ‘I’ve been listening to…’

Did I miss something? Has life moved on? Almost certainly. Have blogs become passé? As the future asserts itself and millennials take centre-stage (I am still reeling from this fact: I have a seventeen year old daughter, as of last week, wtaf?), technology delivers new methods to us, and we absorb them like thirsty sponges. But I got to thinking: does this little old blog seem out of date? In defence, there is still a certain purity to it, to the medium of blogging per se, that I can’t let go of, in fact I don’t want to. There have been a number of discussional pieces written by my contemporaries in recent months, as the shifting sand of blogging is sieved through. Change has become the norm, Instagram has morphed into the cool have-it-all twenty-something, Facebook the awkward older relative in the room, who doesn’t get the ‘in’ joke. Pinterest the quirky, young aunt who is still – at a push – down with the kids.

I remain, and always will be an advocate of good old fashioned blogging. Whatever blogs are, or have become, the creative impulse runs strong in them, and I observe those of us who define new ways to exist within this framework. To me: my blog = my voice. In Joan Didion’s essay ‘Why I Write’, back in 1976, she described how the act of writing is one of ‘imposing oneself on other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.’ Isn’t this precisely why I keep returning here to write? It’s a space to inhabit but crucially, I can freely express my view. To muse about the universe. To have a voice. And I don’t need a gatekeeper (read: publisher) to say I can, or not. Blogging is the ultimate freedom of expression. However what interests – and irks – me is how blogs have become formulaic, how they all look and feel the same, are sponsored by the same brands, proferring the same sentiments.

I accept this blog as such a fundamental part of my life. There were times in the past when I would have disguised it as a strange ‘hobby’; the posting of my thoughts to the internet. It was a shifty secret, whereas now it’s become a tool for my career, but remains a deeply personal space. The professionalisation of blogs is what we have to thank, the extent to which the medium became accepted as a legitimate business method. The proliferation of Instagram as a microblogging platform has contributed to this; in the same way as ‘to google’ has became a verb, so now has ‘to ‘gram’. Long live the new vernacular. But that professional front has taken something away from the heart of the blogging community.

The sticking point is that blogs are only interesting if they are about humans; not just the veneered surface, but the inner world. Without doubt the biggest reader response comes from sharing a truth, a vulnerability, an honesty and all done with integrity. The more vanilla and banale the post, the less people want to read it, which is why, on the whole, business blogs don’t succeed so resolutely. The best blogs, in any world, are those where the writer lays it bare and so I wonder if success in this medium now relies on a curious juxtaposition of professional presentation and personal transparency. This has long been a preoccupation of mine, as in the early days I might have been described as a ‘mummy blogger’ in that I wrote about motherhood and the lives of my children. As we navigate the technical landscape of privacy, I now have a sense of unease about what I shared about them without their knowledge or consent. I now protect their privacy and rarely mention their endeavours. The blog had to grow up.

When filing out forms which request my occupation, I say ‘writer’ and feel a frisson of excitement at that fact. And this week, as a writer, I led a workshop with Hero Stores on Creative Writing. It felt like a prophecy come true, as over a year back I attended a workshop there, and thought, simultaneously: ‘I love this!’ but moreover: ‘I can do this!’ and approached the company to see if they wanted to collaborate. What ensued was one of those rare, serendipitous and perfectly balanced days when it everything I fretted about didn’t happen (is fretting ever necessary?), and everything I wanted to, did happen. A spent the day with a group of clever, interested, vibrant women (my favourite kind) and as well as teaching them, they taught me.

My hope is that blogging continues, within its new parameters and offers those of us who write and read a place to go; a room of one’s own.

3.07am or thereabouts, I wake, then can’t get back to sleep, and my mind cranks itself up a notch. This is a sign. Of late, I’ve been a writer who doesn’t write. It’s a temporary thing to start with; a few missed days, then a week, then a fretful month, and I start to chastise myself that I should be doing better. It’s not that I won’t write, it’s that I can’t write. So regular is this on-again/off-again style of mine, that I wonder if this is just how it goes with me.

We went skiing. Well, I spent half the week skiing, then caught a cold that led me to be hotel-bound. Aren’t hotels peculiar places in the day time? They live a half-life, waiting for guests to return in the evening and, particularly in ski resorts, there’s an unspoken rule that everyone must be out and up the mountain. If you’re not, then why are you there? I binge-watched ‘Stranger Things‘ and ached for my childhood of the 80’s, complete with white ankle boots and Chopper bikes.

I lectured undergraduates on writing and blogging and then following that, proceeded to not write, nor blog! It was like talking about it distilled it. They say those who can’t do, teach? The blog waits in the wings for me, ready when I need it. We enter year eight of blogging and I recall the heady days of daily posts and collaboration between the blog community, which now, has resolutely moved over to Instagram. I spend too much time on Instagram; it is a time-suck, especially stories.

I decide to shift the novel from first person to third person and the enormity of this rears up in front of me like a roadblock. I am trying to skirt round it. I study my own indecision and conclude that I have the luxury of time, and it’s working against me. I can’t help thinking if I still had a demanding job, I might have just penned this damn novel at night. Would it have been keener to get out? I scan job websites.

I fret about single use plastic and wonder how we – and by this I mean my generation – can have gone for so many years not considering the impact of using plastic in everything. The insanity of it; did we really think it would just go away? Turns out biodegradable means in a 100 years, by which time our children’s children will be surrounded by mountains of the stuff. I imagine the oceans thick and oily with pollution. It makes me shudder and I buy beeswax food covers and a water bottle with a fairly pretentious chunk of Japanese charcoal in it (to filter, of course) and feel marginally better.

The weather barrels on with rain and murk, small suggestions of Spring which don’t quite materialise, but the promise is there. Daffodils, birdsong, morning light. One day it will be summer again.

I buy an Anthony Burrill poster. My teeth ache. I listen to an Oprah Winfrey ‘Super Soul Sunday‘ book on Audible and it causes my head to spin as they discuss giving oneself up to the universe. I consider my universe. My friend suggests to me that I need to get outside of my own head. I order an embroidery cross-stitch kit and await its arrival with interest. I drive my kids around. I start using retinol on my skin. I walk the dog; there’s so much water in the earth that I can literally hear it seeping, because of the thaw of the recent, random snowfall.

Ultimately, going back to the universe, I decide what it boils down to is this: please yourself. If you can master that, you’re halfway there! That, and get good sleep! This is how life goes, the layering of stuff and thoughts and work and rest. I read this back and think, with a shamed face: first world problems. Resolve to do better/try harder/finish the novel/stop thinking so much.

I subscribe to podcasts and blogzines. My inbox pings with the latest offerings from The Pool and Selfish Mother. I’ve followed a range of personal blogs for years. This community of women is one I like to frequent. I want to know what people are up to, but I do it from afar. I was the same at school and university; I have a photographic memory for girls I knew but who, for various reasons, I observed from a distance. Professionally, I can recall women I knew of, far across the corporate landscape, and think back fondly of the times when in the toughest of meetings, with a London cityscape outside the window, I would glance across the table and give a knowing smile to a female contemporary. Now it’s the school pick up or the match sideline, which is swollen with possibility of woman-watching.

Isn’t woman-watching what blogging is all about? Isn’t that why Instagram is populated by so many women who now have their own definition: micro-influencers? Two third of Instagram’s daily 400-odd million users are women.

But what I notice about the women who blog is there’s generally a quiet, assured metamorphosis going on. One that is rarely shouted about but is whispered softly, but confidently. Can one be soft and confident at the same time? Turns out, yes. Good bloggers, by definition, have steady followers. Whether it’s a hundred or a thousand or fifty thousand, followers give form to the medium. Good bloggers feature a certain truth about life which people like to read about, observe, absorb and comment on. I’ve seen over the years, good bloggers who have evolved and changed; turned what almost universally started as a personal outlet into something approaching a brand identity. Some start because there is a brand to promote but on the whole, those blogs lack as much honesty and heart.

There’s something about the change I like; dare I say – the ‘journey’. I relate to it because I went from being an employment law expert to a student to a writer. The path was not always even underfoot. My path became treacherous because I could no longer make my corporate life even remotely fit with my home life. Or if I did, I was sending myself slowly but surely insane in the process. What is it they say? The definition of insanity to repeatedly do the same thing, but expect a different outcome?

Yesterday I returned to the college where I did my Masters, expect now I am a graduate. I went to speak to the new intake of undergraduates who sat before me looking simultaneously frightened and invigorated. So much ahead of them, and by contrast I suppose, so much behind me. I’ve done it and I’m out the other side. Now I just have the real world to contend with rather than the hyperbole of academic analysis. It felt…wonderful…to be back in this capacity knowing that I have done the work. I walked away smiling because I sense a tangible change.

Can I confess something? Don’t tell. But just at the point I validated myself as a writer – as in my words were published and I got an MA in writing – I stopped writing. I haven’t written a word for months.

To start with, I was heard myself telling people: ‘I’m taking the summer off after the academics. I am going to have a rest, yes, that dissertation really took it out of me.’ And they’d nod. Yes, I suppose so. And there would be this creeping feeling inside me: but isn’t writing meant to be a compulsion? An up-at-dawn, throw-off-the-covers, get-out-of-my-way, I have to WRITE something, need in your soul? I would dispel my doubt with excuses like I was too busy or it was school holidays or we were packing up to go away.

Of course a few months off is no bad thing, but what I noticed was the compulsion to write was simply not there. My classmates continued writing and planning their novels and I just waited. I felt very flat about what I had achieved. All that hard work to get my Masters and then what? The big unknown. I realised I liked being set assignments and having deadlines dictated to me. This is why I did so well in the corporate world; I liked the structure. I liked having a boss. I am a pleaser. Deep down the disquiet got noisier. An inner voice said: maybe you are not cut out for this writing business? Maybe you are not a ‘real’ writer because you don’t need to do it all the time?

I sat with this for a good few months. A couple of things happened. I stopped fretting about my Masters – water under the bridge. And my novel; it’s still there, it’s not going anywhere. I can go back to it. I started analysing what I had written it about, as in conceptually; marriage, reflecting on childhood, school mothers, women of my age, human competitiveness, teenagers. I saw that these topics were entirely wrapped up in what I was thinking at the time. However they were not distilled, in them was murk and sediment. I drew too closely from my own life and thoughts. So I took an almighty step back and it started to get clearer. I started re-forming the novel in my mind.

Now positivity about writing has started to re-emerge. I am returning to my college to do a year’s volunteer advocacy for the Creative Writing Faculty. This will be a lovely opportunity to return to the academic environment but without the hardship! I can spend time with the under-grads and impart my wisdom! Haha. I am no more wise now than I was before the Masters, but I did last the course and made all of the relevant decisions to graduate.

My characteristic existential panic about what it all means, now it’s over, is vintage Lou! What I keep coming back to though, is this place. This blog. This has always been a clean, comforting empty room in which I can air my thoughts and I can see that over time, investment here has brought me so much in terms of pleasure, friendship and the development of my own goals. So I will be back soon…once I spend a few days revelling in the new silence that September and a new school terms always delivers.

Ce n’est pas moi, whomever this lucky girl is, contemplating being fabulous. I’ve just been to Portugal (old favourite) and revelled in family time, 30-degree heat and grilled fish. I ran a lot in the mornings, down a shady hill with fig trees on one side and ancient olives on the other, looping my 5km circuit until I emerged for the uphill; straight into the blistering morning sun, tinder-dry underfoot. I saw it as a test. And all the time; thinking, thinking, thinking. Running is a good way to process thoughts for me, the meditative thud of my trainers on the ground, a reverb upwards through my body to my head, where all those pesky thoughts reside. I want to shake them out.

I have never been very good a reaching crossroads in life, facing the natural endings, and right now, there are many, not just for me but for those around me. It feels like a seismic time. In relation to my writing, I sense a self-indulgence in this introspection; as my other Masters colleagues have motored on, freshly educated and with an agenda on their minds, I have done the opposite and have not written or planned a word. Even thinking about my degree now can cause a questioning in me. I wonder if there were some elements of it that I judged wrongly. I followed an instinct to work in a way that fit with my professional training: corporate, considered, shiny. Where the convergence of business and creative meet in me. I guess I can’t undo my past experience, nor would I want to and I’ve written before about this conflict. About not fitting the mould. Who made the mould?

I wanted to deviate back to what I knew, this blog, writing essays on stuff I am interested in, I started to wonder whether the creation of a fictional world, inhabited by my own ghosts was a healthy pastime. This is what writing does; it’s like a therapy but also an exorcism. So I mused and ran and mused until I reached a point where I thought: fuck it. That’s about where I am now.

I think the blog is interesting. This long-established place that I created so many years ago was for me, and then that shifted and it became ‘for them’ without my knowing which ‘them’ I was writing for. Prospective publishers? Interested mothers? Friends of my kids? My kids? Family? I don’t even know. All I know is I felt like it was time to reclaim it as mine. In tandem, I have been spending w-h-a-y too much time on Instagram to the point where I might need an intervention. Instagram is a fascinating and endless source of ‘other people’s lives’ but it negates the requirement to deal with your own! Don’t you think?

I met with an old blog friend Sophie, whom I have followed/emailed/chatted to online for years. We had never met face to face. She was like a minty-fresh, beguiling breath of air and I decided that my instinct had been right. Go back to what you know.

I love all the new year posts right now; everyone in blogland is thinking about what the new year brings. A few of my favourites from here from Sophie, Robin and Amanda. There is a freshness about this time of year that I am liking, even though when the alarm went off at 6.30am this morning I could have sworn I only just closed my eyes to sleep and these short winter days are just no fun whatsoever. I again regret that we live in this shitty climate – there’s nothing like ten days in Florida to illustrate what people do with their time when the sun shines and there are palm trees everywhere. Hmmm.

But, what happens this time of year is that I make lots of plans – many of which involve travelling and seeing new things with my little family. We are thinking about going to Amsterdam in February to see my best friend/my children’s Godmother Dawn. We are skiing at Easter – the annual trip that my husband insists on and to be fair, after all of these years, my children are now great skiers so I feel like we gave them that gift. Regardless, I tolerate skiing at the best of times and still can not do it proficiently no matter how hard I try! Then I am looking at summer and maybe going back to America but the East Coast this time – I might fulfil my lifelong wish to see Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. We are lucky. The way our life falls together, I notice, is that we all work really bloody hard during the term time and then survive and hold it together as a family by going on trips in the holidays.

We have got used to being us four now when we go away. For many years we travelled with friends, especially where the kids were ‘man-matched’ with a buddy. But increasingly it got hard to coordinate everyone’s needs and now, we have done a few trips just us and honestly it’s working really well. The realisation that once children grow up and are teenagers, the days are numbered for family holidays and there will come a time when (heaven forbid) Boo will want to go somewhere with her friends!! Yep, so I am sticking in as many cool travel experiences as I can between now and that time.

More generally though, I get this feeling this year is going to be good. I have thought a lot about the writing that I am doing and whether, by virtue of my studies, I am now ‘a writer’. There seems to be something terribly self conscious about this profession that I am not that keen on. It makes me want to rebel, I don’t find that I long to be published and unlike many of my fellow writers, I am not obsessing over Amazon genre definitions and wondering whether I am writing a book that others will want to buy. I hope someone wants to read it, when it is done, but for now, it is an exercise in what I can do, what I can create, rather than being a commercial venture. I notice that when there is a commercial angle to what I write (and I have experienced this before on this blog when I did the oils business) my ‘voice’ completely changes. I don’t want that to happen again so I am trying to just stick with what I have to say and not try to sell an idea or a concept. If you are along for the ride, then great…welcome.

Another factor that I continue to grapple with is the on line world. I see my children live in this second world so much and notice that my husband and I increasingly turn to our phones to check email or whatever. Although I know it sets a precedent, I still do it. Although I know that it is an addictive past time to continually refresh the view of Instagram or Facebook I still do it. It really is a curious human behaviour. And I don’t think I am alone. In fact I know I am not; so many people write and discuss this modern issue. How much is too much? I have these embedded habits which all seem to revolve around checking status, of getting a fresh view – do I really need to be so up to date??!! The one exception to this is Pinterest, which still, as I am such a visual person, manages to enhance my days. But the rest…not so much.

One thing of note, last week when in Monaco, was that the women I met (the wives and girlfriends; although not always) were so open. Maybe there was something unusual about the prospect of a few days in a different place with people we’d never met before. People whose perception of me was unformed. Late at night I found myself in conversation with a variety of women, all picking through opinions and thoughts, dispensing wisdom when it was relevant but otherwise in listening mode. I met a few women who seemed very much like me, which is odd considering in my normal life, where I see women all the time, I very rarely meet anyone who is entirely on my wavelength. And I feel that it takes about five years to establish trust between two women over the age of 40. Certainly by 35, the veneer (which I have often written about) is up. Glued into place. This has led to me consider that my wavelength is one that not many of my contemporaries tune in to, although they’re generally happy to have me in the background – like the unknown readers of this blog.

So, as ever I came away with observations. One was that of the women I met, all of whom had taken different paths in life; some with children, some without, some working, some not, all expressed ‘is this how life is meant to be?’ queries. No one asserted that they’d got it right. There was an inherent unsureness. Admittedly this is a small and privileged demographic of corporate wives or corporate climbers, but still.

Of course, this is relevant as I prepare to start my Masters in September, any and all human interaction becomes potential book material, to the extent that I eavesdropped on a conversation on the plane which was so candid and so public that by the time we landed I was taking notes! My friends have admitted that they are disconcerted about the idea of reading about themselves in something I have written. Everything has become fair game. I feel faintly bad about this; as if I am inadvertently plundering places I shouldn’t for inspiration. But then I figure, that’s the way it goes doesn’t it?! Where does one draw the line?

So back to the women I met; where does this lack of confidence derive from? Why does no one have it all figured out? I’ve always been fascinated by the way women relate to each other and I am sure this is one the reasons I have blogged here for so many years. I look occasionally at my blog stats – where the visitor traffic comes from and how many followers etc. Over time it’s become less and less important to me as the blog has become something I write for myself (can you tell?!) rather than crafting it for an audience. If the audience applaud, then great. But isn’t it interesting that all this blog, or any blog has ever been is a series of observations about life, written mainly by women, mainly for women. I quite like that.

Meanwhile in the mind of this woman, this week:

Suitcase unpacking; dry cleaning of my party gown.
‘This time last week’ feelings.
One unwell teenage daughter, upstairs in bed. Sunny outside.
One piece of local news, affecting a peer of my daughter’s, that was so awful and so tragic, I couldn’t sleep after I heard.
One beach walk with friends, righting the wrongs.
A fairly hefty guilt about not having actually written much yet.
But much thought about what I might write.
Story of my life.
Fish tank issues.
One son who is so in the midst of being ten years old and heart-stoppingly handsome (there’s a mother’s love, I know) that when I talk to him, no matter what it’s about, I smile.
One husband who is doing pretty well at work.
One half-done house that is constantly messy.
Not enough sleep.
A painful return to yoga after just one week off. Aching muscles.
A wild sale purchase that I am sure I shall get the wear from one day.

It’s hot and cold on the blog; I know this. I marvel in awe at the post-rate of some of my peers in this blogging pursuit and am reminded that it’s been a long time since I wrote with the sole intention of gaining readers. I write for me and those who want to come along for the ride. There are many lovely readers who persistently drop by and comment and it always makes me smile. When I write I have you in mind, if anyone.

Some of my reluctance to write has been the final acceptance that my writing quarters were not up to scratch. Due to the house build hiatus, my husband and I are sharing an office area in our home where I had a little old kitchen table that served as a desk. The wrong height and god-awful ergonomics but pretty and gnarly and weathered. I eventually ordered a gleaming new trestle desk in white (of course) and I sit at it now, marvelling at how my shoulders aren’t hunched as I type. It’s a clean slate. It has yet to be snarled up with paper and postcards and the mess that seems to accompany any area where I work.

When my husband is here, in our shared room, I have to endure corporate conference calls, oh-how-I remember-them-well. Some so tense you could hear a pin drop, when I instinctively know not to type or shift in my chair for fear that someone on the line will hear my presence. The pup at my feet; willing him not to bark. In my corporate days, the world could begin and end on a conference call; such was the magnitude. A million decisions being made across the wires (are there still wires?!) linking up countries and time zones and ‘virtual teams’. Funny to think.

Of course now my days are spent making laundry decisions (light or dark?) and plotting my book in my head. The realisation that I will write that novel that has been lurking inside me for so long has come as a relief. The existential crisis has abated.

The winter persists and when certain songs play on the radio, we are transported back to those balmy Floridian days in the summer when we cruised alligator alley in a gas-guzzling American car and watched the palm trees whizz by. Or enjoyed the sunset over the water at the beach with that distinct feeling to appreciate, appreciate, appreciate in case the memory was too nebulous to hold on to. I remind myself that even my wintry, English, darkened sunsets (over clod-covered fields) would be magical to someone, somewhere. It’s only to me that they are ten to the dozen. Doesn’t stop me photographing them for Instagram though…

It is half term this week, signalling many logistical challenges to be spread between myself and my husband. He has returned from a 10 day trip to San Francisco (conference; not to be confused with conference call) and is now a husk of his former self! Nothing like continuous buffet food and long haul flying to mess with your circadian rhythms. He has man flu. Ugh. Meanwhile I am treading water really, going through the normal motions of life, but with the kids and their buddies in tow. Such is the contrast between school term time and breaks.

Living in a half-built house is starting to get on my last nerve, as our student-style, temporary plywood kitchen is falling apart. It’s ugly. And I hate ugly. I alternate between deciding to white-wash everything, propping up and smoothing down or just leaving it to fall apart. There seems little point as we await the return of the builders some time late Spring. When is Spring coming? It’s bittersweet as I know it brings with it the whole circus of renovations again. One day it will all done repeat after me… 😉